A Change in the Administration's Strategy Towards Iran?

The WSJ reports the administration is shifting their strategy to support dissidents inside Iran by expanding their access to communications by providing them with hardware and software to get their message out over the internet. They're also trying to counter the regime's jamming of Voice of America. However, the administration is also cutting funding for democracy promotion:

As part of its revised strategy, however, the State Department is reversing course from the Bush administration and is no longer funding some aggressive institutions focused on crafting training programs for democracy activists or offering other services intended to aid Iran's opposition.

The U.S. has cut new funding for programs including a center established in New Haven, Conn., to catalog human-rights abuses in Iran; an Iranian journalist-training initiative and a social-networking program focused on promoting democracy and human rights inside Iran.

"Because Iranians seem willing to take risks, we should be willing to provide them help when requested," says Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Washington's Freedom House. The State Department last year declined to provide $3 million in funding to keep open a Freedom House online magazine in Farsi that focused on democracy promotion.
U.S. officials say many of the programs had little impact inside Iran, a charge disputed by their administrators.

U.S. officials say they haven't pared back support for Iranian democracy, stressing that they have increased it in the communications area.

I'm not so sure this is a shift in strategy as it is in tactics.  This is an attempt by the administration to garner more bargaining power in negotiations.  The administration still wants to find a diplomatic solution through negotiations, and is still avoiding more coercive measures.  This, in combination with recent leaks that the Saudis will allow the Israelis to use their airspace to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, are signals to the Iranians that it's in their best interest to enter into negotiations with the US.  Interestingly, it also tells Turkey the US and Israel has other options if they're going to throw their support behind Tehran. 

The recent UNSC sanctions are designed to specifically target the regime and its security guarantor, the IRGC, versus the broad-based petroleum refining sanctions that impact all of Iranian society.  STRATFOR notes the Russians came aboard because they want technological modernization and  investment in their economy, and want a quid pro quo from the US on this. They still have a few cards to play as the sanctions do not prevent them from selling the S-300 air defense system to Iran, nor have they abandoned the Bushehr nuclear reactor project.  STRATFOR points out the significance of these sanctions is not that the sanctions themselves are crippling, but the loss of Russia as an ally is unsettling to Iran:

Iran may be used to a lot of things, but it is having an exceptionally difficult time getting used to the idea of Russia — long considered Iran’s primary power patron — hanging Tehran out to dry. Iran made no secret of its displeasure with Moscow in the lead up to the sanctions vote, releasing statement after statement warning the Kremlin of the consequences of turning its back on Tehran. Now having received the sanctions slap in the face, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is showing his defiance by canceling his trip to the Russian and Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tashkent on June 11, while Iran’s oil minister has postponed a June 22 visit to Russia.

This is by no means the first time Iran has been betrayed by its Russian ally. After all, Russia voted in the affirmative the previous six times the Security Council passed sanctions resolutions against Iran. Those previous sanctions were a symbolic show of force against Iran, and everyone, including Iran, knew they lacked real bite and suffered from the enforceability dilemma. This latest round of sanctions will face the same enforcement challenges and were careful to avoid touching Iran’s energy trade so as to get Russian and Chinese buy-in. That said, this did not end up being a fluff resolution.

The newest resolution expands travel and financial sanctions on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps entities — a preponderant force in the Iranian economy. The sanctions also go beyond inspections of Iranian air cargo to the seizure and disposal of Iranian contraband traveling by air or sea that could be used for military purposes. Instead of calling on states to exercise vigilance and restraint in the supply, transfer or sale of offensive weapons to Iran, the new resolution bans all of the above. Like previous resolutions, this one bars Iran from all enrichment-related activity, but now also emphasizes the construction of new nuclear sites. In short, this sanctions round expands the list of things Iran supposedly cannot do, while it allows action by interested states to interfere with a broader range of Iranian activities.

So is all the above enough to bring Iran to the table? Shadow Government is pessimistic:

And the Administration seems to have no strategy for what to do next. Sanctions aren't a strategy, they're a tool for achieving the strategic objective of preventing Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state. We're over-reliant on sanctions to deliver that weighty objective and need to be thinking much more creatively about how to impose costs on the Iranian government -- internationally and domestically -- for their choices.

When pressed to accede to his country being ruled by Macedonia, the Greek statesman Demosthenes refused, saying "I do not purchase regret at such a price." It could be that the Security Council Resolution will do the trick and Tehran will reconsider its current course. But I doubt it. It seems instead that we have purchased regret at the price of re-establishing Russian cooperation with Iran's nuclear and missile programs, demonstrating our inability to deliver both a NATO ally and an increasingly important rising power, and revealing that we have no cards to play except enfeebled sanctions.

The ball is in Iran's court now.  It's doubtful Iran will enter into negotiations without reminding the US its got a few levers of its own, namely, Hezbollah, and it's ability to prevent the formation of a functioning government in Iraq, which complicates the US exit strategy. Unless of course, the administration decides to pass much wider sanctions and fully support democracy promotion in Iran.  Then things will get really interesting.